Without a Trace
Authors: Liza Marklund
Tags: #Fiction, #Crime, #Mystery & Detective, #General
A family torn apart. Another family learning how to live together.
Ingemar Lerberg has it all: he’s a successful businessman, politician, husband and father. Then he is brutally beaten and left for dead. His wife, Nora, is missing. With no alternative, his children are taken into care. In one night, a family has been ripped apart.
Journalist Annika Bengtzon is covering the case. As she delves into the horrifying details of this family’s fate, she grapples too with the change in her own. With her new boyfriend she must patch together a home for their children.
Family matters above all else. But behind the scenes, darkness lies.
Contents
Human beings can only comprehend a certain level of pain. Then they pass out. Their consciousness protests, like the trip-switch of an overloaded electrical circuit.
Staying on the right side of that boundary required sensitivity and judgement.
The man with the hammer looked at the person on the bed with stoical resignation. ‘It’s your decision,’ he said. ‘We can stop whenever you want.’
There was no response, but the man was in no doubt. The words had been understood. This particular client (he always thought of them like that, as clients he’d been asked to work with) was a rather impressive example of
Homo sapiens
: well-developed musculature, healthy skin-tone, a fairly thin layer of subcutaneous fat. And driven by ideology and conviction, a sure indication that the job was likely to be of the more complicated sort. The struggling and squirming had stopped now, and the individual was lying quietly on the bed in his trousers and shirt. The duct tape round his wrists and ankles was no longer needed; only the piece over his mouth remained.
The man looked at his twin brother, his mirror-image on the other side of the bed, and they nodded to each other. His brother bent down over the toolbox and made his selection, then took out an awl with his gloved hand. The man with the hammer nodded approval at his choice.
He shut his eyes briefly to focus on his breathing and raise his awareness of the moment, of being in the here and now, in his own body, the way the soles of his feet felt against his rubber-soled shoes, the weight of the tool in his hand.
For a fleeting but intense moment he missed his Magnum.
They had actually moved away from using firearms as tools. They made such a terrible noise, even with silencers, and he wasn’t thinking primarily about the damage they had done to their hearing. (Wearing ear-defenders had been one option, but that idea had been rejected as lacking subtlety.) The public tended to react badly to the sight of firearms, but ropes and toolboxes were completely unobtrusive.
He realized that his mind was wandering, and brought it firmly but gently back to focus on his breathing again. Then he opened his eyes and looked at the client. ‘I’m going to give you an opportunity to answer now,’ he said softly. ‘If you shout or do anything silly, it will hurt.’
The client didn’t answer. His eyes were closed and he was breathing through his nose in a laboured, rasping way.
He pulled the duct tape back a few centimetres, just enough to uncover the corner of the man’s mouth. ‘Are you ready?’ he asked. ‘All the unpleasantness can stop here.’
He drew the tape back a little further.
The man breathed in through his mouth, and there was a gurgling sound in his throat. He coughed, spraying saliva.
He leaned close to the client’s ear, his voice a silky whisper. ‘Where is she?’
The client’s breathing was irregular, and his eyes were still closed. But the question had gone in: the movement of his eyes under the lids became more rapid and his body tensed.
The man leaned even further forward. ‘What did you say?’ he whispered. ‘I didn’t quite hear you …’
The client attempted to speak, and his Adam’s apple bobbed. The sounds that emerged were more gasps than words. ‘Don’t … know …’
The man sighed, and saw his mirror-image do the same. ‘Such a shame,’ he said, replacing the duct tape. The underside was wet with saliva and wouldn’t stick properly: next time they’d have to replace it with a fresh piece. ‘Well, let’s see how things look under this shirt,’ he said, undoing the buttons once more.
Two tears appeared below the client’s closed eyelids.
‘Try not to cry,’ the mirror-image said. ‘The nasal passages swell up, making it hard to breathe.’
He could see the client struggling to do as they said: he really did want to be amenable. That was a good sign. Carefully he felt the client’s ribs, and the man groaned. The bruising had crept down the side of his torso towards his navel, and he could feel the fractures clearly beneath the skin.
‘Let’s take number three,’ he said, and raised the hammer. His mirror-image pulled one of the client’s eyelids open, and his pupil contracted as the light hit his eye. Good: the reflexes were working. He felt with his fingers across the client’s ribcage, carefully took aim, then administered a firm and precisely measured blow with the hammer. The rib broke with a dull, muffled click, and the body shook in a brief convulsion. The man’s breathing became quicker and shallower: he was on the verge of losing consciousness again.
His twin brother leaned over the client. ‘You just have to tell us. Then it will be over.’
His eyes rolled back until only the whites were visible.
His brother took a firmer grip on the awl.
‘Where is Nora?’
*
We were standing under one of the apple trees in the garden. It was spring and the tree was in full blossom – I remember the sound of bumble-bees among the petals, the sun’s flickering light through the crown. It had rained that morning; glistening drops still clung to the bark and in the forks of the branches. I was holding my little boy in my arms – he was five days old, Isak, my first. I’d wrapped a blanket round him to keep the wind off, and Ingemar was holding me – he was holding us both. I remember how soft my son felt against my cheek, the way he smelt, my husband’s arms round my shoulders. We stood there close together, the three of us, a unit that was greater than everything else.
That memory often comes back to me. When I need to conjure up an image of perfect happiness, that’s the feeling that comes back to me, that moment with Isak and Ingemar under the apple tree: intoxication, perfection.
The first thing she noticed was the silence. The dog wasn’t barking. Usually he stood by the garage door, howling so hard that he frothed at the mouth, tugging at his leash until the pressure of the collar against his throat turned his yapping into breathless gasps.
There was something wrong with that dog – she’d always thought so. If he’d been a person, she was sure he’d have been diagnosed with one of those syndromes. He was quite a handsome creature, shiny black coat and big paws, but he was wall-eyed and his teeth were too big. He always seemed a bit out of control, unstable. That he wasn’t barking gave her a brief and indefinable feeling of relief.
It vanished the instant she reached the back door and found it unlocked. She opened it without a sound and stood in the doorway, as the dry indoor heat hit her face.
The emptiness seemed to echo. Then she noticed the smell. Not offensive, just different. Sort of sweet and sharp at the same time. It didn’t belong there.
She stepped quickly into the utility room and pulled the door shut behind her as quietly as she could. The feeling of unease was stronger. She could hear her own heartbeat rushing inside her head.
Slowly she bent down and took off her boots without a sound. A little puddle of water had already formed around them. Without thinking she reached for a dishcloth on the worktop and wiped it up. Her slippers were by the washing-machine, but for some reason she didn’t put them on. She put her gloves into her coat pockets, then took off her coat, hat and scarf and hung them on the hook next to the back door, along with her handbag. Then she walked towards the kitchen in her stockinged feet. The smell was more intense.
The light was on above the kitchen worktop. The third thing that’s wrong, she thought.
The dog. The back door. The light.
Environmental awareness, she remembered. Be aware of the environment. Save electricity. Credibility is important to a politician. You have to set a good example to the voters.
She turned the light off, then walked past the worktop and into the hall.
The dog was lying there.
At first she thought it was a different dog. He seemed so small. Lifelessness had shrunk him. The untamed energy he exuded in life had dissipated and left him looking like a rag on the hall rug, the fake one with the Persian pattern. It was impossible to get it clean with the vacuum – she always had to use a roller afterwards. The dog’s blood hadn’t soaked into the plasticky acrylic material, just lay on top where it had dried into a brown pancake.
Her breathing became laboured. She felt her armpits start to sweat, as they usually did when things got out of hand, when the students in her old school lost concentration and stared, scraping their shoes on the cement floor. She tried to pull herself together. After all, she’d never really liked the dog. Stefan, that was its name. How could anyone give a name like that to a dog?
Keeping close to the wall she made her way into the living room. The curtains were closed. She blinked a few times in the gloom. The air was warm and stuffy. She swallowed. She ought to get out of there. At once.
Someone must have killed the dog. That had been no accident. Why would anyone want to kill it?
There was a noise. Someone groaning. Or coughing, maybe. A low voice, male.
She stiffened.
It had come from upstairs, from the bedrooms.
She looked at the staircase.
The husband mustn’t see her. How could she explain what she was doing there? Mind you, the door had been open, unlocked. Anyone could have walked in.
She looked at the dog again.
He must have killed the dog. Why? Had anything happened to the children? What if they were upstairs?
She thought she could make out more sounds from upstairs, but she wasn’t sure.
What should she do? The house ought to be empty. Locked, shut up.
She stood still in the hall for several minutes, but perhaps it wasn’t actually that long.
Then she wiped her hands on her trousers and, before she had time to change her mind, stepped quickly past the dog and hurried breathlessly up the stairs. She made sure she didn’t tread on the fifth and seventh steps, the ones that creaked.
The door to the children’s room was closed. She opened it cautiously, knew it didn’t squeak. It was only a few weeks since she’d oiled the hinges. The roller-blind with the rabbit pattern was pulled down. The stuffed toys were there but otherwise the room was empty. The children’s beds were made, Isak’s, Samuel’s, and little Elisabeth’s over by the window. She breathed a sigh of relief and closed the door behind her. She walked to the main bedroom.
He was lying in the double bed, if it was actually him. She’d only seen him in the wedding photograph, and his face was unrecognizable. His mouth was wide open, his front teeth missing. His body was in an unnatural position – she hadn’t known that arms and legs could point in those directions. He was wearing trousers and a shirt. No socks. The soles of his feet had been lacerated.
She stared at the man and felt her body filling with something heavy and warm, making it hard to breathe.
Someone had done this to him. What if they were still in the house?
A gurgling noise came from the man’s throat. She found that she could move her legs again, and stumbled backwards onto the landing, regained her balance and walked past the children’s room, down the stairs, past the dog’s body, into the kitchen, then the utility room.
Sweat was trickling down her sides as she fumbled with the buttons of her coat. She was crying as she locked the back door behind her, tears burning with loss and, perhaps, a little guilt.
The lift pinged and came to a stop. Its doors opened with a sucking sound. Nina Hoffman looked uncertainly at the digital numbers: was this right?
She stepped out onto the red-painted landing and the doors closed behind her. A low, muffled sound told her that the lift was disappearing, deep inside the hermetically sealed building.
Yes, this was it, the right stairwell, and the right floor.
To her left was a glass door with an alarm and a coded lock. She walked over and pressed a button that she assumed was a bell. She couldn’t hear anything. She stood and waited, her mouth and throat dry. One of the lifts swept past – she couldn’t tell if it was going up or down. For a moment she felt a pang of dark, giddy uncertainty: what was she doing? Was she really going to put herself through this
again
?